Sustainable Development Research Group

This research group studies the challenges of sustainable development, vulnerability and adaptation to societal and environmental changes. In our research projects we study the sensitivity and vulnerability of peoples, livelihoods and institutions to societal and environmental changes. Alongside threats to biodiversity, pressures on cultural diversity by local, national and international economic developments need our increased attention.  The adaptive capacity of Arctic inhabitants to these changes will be an important focus within our research group.

The Arctic and Sustainable Development

People in the Arctic, their institutions and livelihoods face rapid and cumulative changes in their environment and in the societies surrounding them. The speed of these changes may make it difficult for them to adapt. Growing interest to the use of the region’s natural resources and impacts of industrialization and global change increasingly and directly affect human lives and the state of the environment.

Sustainable development requires long-term perspective to the relations between the environment, society and economy. Sustainable development is a widely accepted principle but also contested. Different stakeholders have different views about what it means and how it should be promoted. We also observe a rich diversity of ways to respond to the challenges of a changing social and natural environment among Arctic inhabitants. Sustainable development is also a question of international cooperation and governance in the region. Indigenous peoples have been increasingly recognized as partners of states in international environmental cooperation.

Group

Projects

 Photo: Anna Stammler-Gossman

Photo: Jussi Portaankorva

Made by researcher Nuccio Mazzullo
 
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